Staff Pick: Bat for Lashes show ought to be a spectacle with “hell-of-a-performer” frontwoman in tow

If one thing’s clear from the collection of artful music videos from last year’s Bat for Lashes album, The Haunted Man, it’s this: Natasha Khan has a flair for the theatrical.

The half-English, half-Pakistani songstress has a voice that can segue from breathy sigh to clarion call. Feel the tingles when, on “Lilies,” she proclaims, “Thank God I’m alive!” Or on “Laura,” when she passionately intones, “You’re the train that crashed my heart!”

But she’s just as comfortable acting out melodrama, whether that means pouting for the camera, enacting elaborate dance routines or exultantly lifting her clenched fists skyward. She’s a hell of a performer, so her show Friday at the Newport with opener Barbarian ought to be a spectacle.